The Kafir Project

by Lee Burvine

  Just a little taste of hell.

  Faraj approached Kazemi with the syringe, keeping the gun on him the entire time.

  Kazemi raised his hands defensively. "No. No, what are you doing? What is that?"

  "He's just going to knock you out." The calmness in his own voice surprised Rees. "So he can get me out of here without you calling for help. You'll be all right when it wears off." No point telling him about the horrors that were coming.

  On Rees's other side, Osborn spoke up. "This is crazy. We don't know what's in there. Shoot me if you want. I'm not letting you stick that needle in me."

  "In fact you are not." Faraj tossed the hypodermic on the café floor. "Dr. Rees here will inject you."

  It took a moment, but Rees got that part too. If Faraj tried to give the injections himself, he'd be much too close. One of them might grab for his gun.

  Faraj pointed down. "That is a filled, ten milliliter syringe. Inject two full millileters of the drug into each of your companions, Dr. Rees."

  Rees picked up the syringe. He briefly imagined throwing it like a dart. Just a crazy fantasy. Even if he managed to stick the needle into Faraj somehow, the plunger wouldn't depress.

  Kazemi turned his face toward Rees. The hopelessness in his expression came from some place far beyond fear. "I don't think I can do this. I just can't."

  Rees tried to will strength into Kazemi with his eyes. "Listen to me. I've been injected with this drug. Okay? This very same drug. It won't kill you. But I promise you, this man will. Please. Let me do this."

  Kazemi bit his lip and nodded gravely.

  Rees injected Kazemi at the wrist, exactly as Faraj had injected him. He gently depressed the plunger, keeping a careful eye on the graduation marks.

  One milliliter ... one point five ... two.

  He pulled out the needle. A drop of blood beaded up on Kazemi's skin.

  Kazemi must have sensed it was over. He turned back to Rees with the countenance of a man about to be hanged.

  "It'll be all right," was all Rees could think to say.

  Kazemi's face slackened. He rocked there on his knees a moment, then fell over backwards, his calves and feet bent awkwardly underneath him as he lay still on the café floor.

  Sorry Professor. Wish I could say pleasant dreams. Rees looked back up at Faraj. "I don't suppose you have a clean needle? For him?" He indicated Osborn with a sideways jerk of his head.

  "Sorry, no. We will just have to take our chances gentlemen."

  Osborn was unbuttoning the cuff of his shirtsleeve as Rees turned to him. Then for some reason he started to rock back and forth.

  A moment later Rees realized it wasn't Osborn who was rocking. It was him.

  What the hell is happening?

  A wave of dizziness had hit him. He suddenly felt on the verge of panic. He inhaled deeply through his nose, and tried to calm himself.

  You've hardly eaten in forty-eight hours and you were drugged earlier today. You're just dizzy. That's all. Just dizzy.

  Rees struggled to stay on his knees. There was no knowing what this lunatic would do to them all if he collapsed now. "I need ... I just need a second," he said.

  He felt the syringe drop from his fingers. Then the floor rose up fast toward his face. He managed to get his hands beneath him in time to break the fall. The cool linoleum pressed against his cheek.

  "Dr. Rees." Faraj's voice floated down from somewhere above him. "I will not tolerate games. If this is some kind of stratagem..."

  It's not a stratagem you asshole. Rees silently gave himself a stern order. Get up, get up! Right now, or you're gonna die down here.

  He brought his hands in close beneath his shoulders, to press himself upright. His fingers found Osborn's plastic shopping bag. Directly beneath him.

  He could feel something through the plastic. A hard, rectangular outline.

  The lectionary codex.

  With vellum pages. Thick, leather pages. Hundreds of them stacked between two metal plates.

  Rees felt for the edges of the codex through the plastic bag, then dug his fingers under them.

  There. Got it.

  He scooted his knees under him, and humped over the bag, keeping it hidden from view. "I'm all right," he said weakly. "I just got dizzy. Give me another second."

  The gun would be trained on him. Rees hoped his first move would be inscrutable at least. No way to do all this in one, smooth motion.

  He rose up, not so fast as to seem like a threat. And as he did, he pulled the bag and the codex up with him, close to his chest.

  He looked across at Faraj's face. Confusion there.

  That was the extra moment he needed.

  Rees thrust his arms out and jammed the bag directly toward the gun.

  He heard a loud pop. The codex jerked in his hands.

  He pushed hard with his legs, using every atom of adrenaline-charged strength he had left. Driving himself straight toward the gun.

  A second loud pop. Another shockwave ran up his arms.

  He had his head tucked down behind the plastic bag. He couldn't see anything, but he felt it when the codex connected with his target.

  Faraj had no time to brace himself. When Rees slammed into him, they both tumbled backward.

  The two of them crash landed on something. Not the floor. Softer. The dead man.

  They had fallen onto his body.

  Faraj was still holding the gun, but Rees had ended up on top of him. He dropped the plastic bag and grabbed the weapon with both hands. Then he wracked Faraj's gun arm back and over his head, and smashed the gun against the floor. Once. Then again. Then again. Trying to knock it loose.

  Rees's advantage lasted only a moment. His opponent was far more powerful. Faraj grabbed Rees's face and pushed hard. Rees's head arched back further and further, until it felt like his neck would break.

  He desperately tried to find and pull the gun's trigger. He couldn't tell what direction the weapon was pointing, but it didn't matter. In this bizarre equation, he'd actually be better off regardless of which of them got killed here.

  Rees was losing his grip on the gun. He squeezed his fingers over and over.

  The gun boomed in his ear. He felt the heat flash on his face.

  Rees rolled away and looked back.

  Faraj lay there, still holding the gun. There was a lot of blood.

  But he was moving.

  Alive. The bastard was still alive.

  Rees watched as Faraj sat up on the café floor. Blood gushed from his forehead. The bullet had grazed him there, tearing a deep horizontal gash. The white of his exposed skull was clearly visible.

  Faraj swung the gun wildly, left and right, searching for his target, at the same time trying vainly to wipe the thick flowing blood out of his eyes.

  Rees started to rush him, intending to kick the gun away.

  Pop! Pop! Pop!

  Faraj was firing blind now as he swept the gun back and forth across the room.

  By pure chance he had missed both Rees and Osborn.

  Rees decided to alter his plan.

  He shouted to Osborn, "Get the hell out of here!Now!"

  CHAPTER 62

  DANNI CONTINUED ARTIFICIAL respiration on Morgan until the paramedics took over.

  She'd established that Morgan still had a heartbeat. She had no experience checking pulses, but she could hardly find one even at Morgan's neck.

  That had to be bad.

  The paramedics stepped in without missing a beat. They rushed Morgan on a rolling stretcher to an emergency vehicle waiting outside.

  Louis remained conscious throughout all of it. From what Danni could make of the paramedics' technical jargon, he'd taken a bullet in his right lung. Serious but survivable, is what they all seemed to think.

  It didn't stop him from asking one of them to witness an oral last will and testament of some kind. Danni tuned out the details.

  Outs
ide, two of the paramedics loaded Morgan into the emergency vehicle as a second one pulled up.

  Danni stood in the rain and watched as they climbed in there after her. "I need to go with her." She told a woman paramedic, who was closest to the opened rear doors.

  The woman shook her head. "Sorry. Not on a siren run."

  "We're married."

  The woman locked part of the stretcher down with a lever that made a mechanical clack. She didn't even look up. "Sorry, can't do it."

  Danni dug out her Lawrence Livermore ID and held it up. "Federal agent. Special Agent Morgan has information affecting national security. You're hindering my investigation. I'm gonna need your name."

  The woman shifted around and locked down another point on the stretcher. Clack. Then she looked over at the ID.

  "You're full of shit." She reached a hand down. "Get in."

  ON THE WAY to the hospital, Morgan's heart went into V-fib. Ventricular fibrillation. Not stopped, just flailing uselessly.

  Watching it all in the close space of the emergency vehicle's patient compartment, Danni felt like a ghost.

  She was right there, but she could affect nothing. Nothing at all.

  They intubated Morgan. One of the paramedics continued to squeeze oxygen into her with a flexible bag, while the other charged up an external defibrillator.

  The high-pitched whine of the machine charging sounded like an electronic camera flash that Danni owned. She'd taken photos of Kerry using it. At the ruins of Sutro Baths on one foggy day in some other life.

  Don't give up, Kerry. Don't you dare give up.

  Danni remembered the dead DCIS agent back in Livermore. Outside the Core. Kerry had said the odds of restarting a heart were ten percent.

  You have to make it, Kerry. You have to make it for both of us now.

  After smearing some gel out of a tube onto Morgan's chest, the paramedic applied the paddles. "Clear!"

  Morgan's body bucked off the stretcher.

  The paramedics watched the lines on the green monitor. They didn't seem to like what they were seeing there.

  One of them produced a horrifyingly long needle, and used it to inject adrenaline directly into Morgan's heart.

  The other one charged up the defibrillator again.

  They waited.

  Danni the ghost watched. Watched and wished that time travel really was possible.

  Because if it were, she would go back to that day at the beach, at Sutro Baths. She would bend the timelines of their two lives. Weave them together. Touching from that point forward, curled around each other like lovers limbs.

  Then she would gently point their mutual course toward a safe, warm place. Far from crazy people and their insane ambitions.

  "Clear!"

  Morgan bucked again on the stretcher.

  CHAPTER 63

  REES HAD HIS arms full as he fled the café, hugging the gym bag he'd brought from the motel and the plastic bag with the artifacts. He shoved Osborn in the middle of the back with them, trying to rush him out the rear door.

  There was nothing he could do for Kazemi lying unconscious back there. Plus, he had a sense that Faraj wouldn't bother with him. The man seemed to have some strange morals about killing when he didn't deem it strictly necessary.

  Just outside the door, Osborn stumbled and fell to his hands and knees in a puddle. Rees remembered the man's leg and the platform shoe.

  Osborn wasn't going to run his way out of this.

  Rees looked around through the dense rain, coming down in sheets now. He spotted a row of trash cans nearby-tucked into a dark corner behind the building, under the roadwork that formed the southern approach to the bridge.

  Rees yanked Osborn to his feet and directed him toward the trash cans. "Get back behind there. I'll lead him away."

  Osborn nodded once and headed for the cans without saying a word.

  Rees threw the gym bag's strap over his head and across his chest like a sash, and tucked the plastic shopping bag under the other arm. Then he took off running.

  As he hit the cement stairway to the observation area, something exploded in front of him. He pulled up in shock and confusion. Then he realized that must have been a bullet strike.

  Rees didn't waste a second looking back. He leapt up the remaining stairs, taking them three at a time.

  The observation area itself was empty. But not far off he could make out the lights of the toll plaza through the downpour. Bridge security over there. Probably California highway patrol too. Safety. If he could reach them.

  Panting hard, Rees cut left on the sidewalk that bordered the roadway and sprinted toward those toll booths. His chest hurt so much now it felt like he was breathing in flames. And what started as a side stitch had turned to a knife in his ribs.

  His lungs couldn't keep up with his body's oxygen demands. More evidence of that-his vision was starting to narrow. Myopia. He was probably going to black out soon.

  He had to slow down or fall down, there wasn't any third choice. He dropped to a walk-trot and silently cursed himself for being so damn out of shape.

  He dared a quick glance over his shoulder. No one back there. Just rain beating hard on the empty sidewalk. He might actually make it.

  He was nearly within what he judged to be shouting distance of the toll plaza now. Maybe another thirty seconds to go.

  Farther up the sidewalk ahead of him something was moving in the dense rain. He couldn't quite make it out. It was moving fast, though, and it seemed to be coming his way.

  Rees stopped and watched as the figure resolved into the outline of a man. A man running.

  Faraj. It had to be him.

  His pursuer must have taken the roadway up from the parking lot instead of the footpath. In doing that, he'd effectively blocked any approach by Rees to the toll plaza.

  As Rees continued to watch, the running figure left the sidewalk and cut an angle eastward across the landscaping. Swinging out to cover Rees's retreat back through the observation area too.

  Rees turned on his heels and jogged away. Best speed he could manage right now. He checked back over his shoulder every few steps.

  Faraj was gaining on him quickly.

  The 101 freeway ran just feet to his left. Even in this weather the cars were flying past him at fifty miles an hour or more. If he jumped the safety railing and tried to flag one down, he'd be flattened in seconds.

  There was nowhere to go but straight ahead, further out onto the bridge's expanse. He pushed himself to jog faster, but his legs felt like two tubes full of wet cement.

  He was just going to have to think his way out of this.

  Rees remembered hearing the bridge was closed to pedestrians at night, to discourage suicides. Still accessible to cyclists, though. So there had to be some kind of gate to buzz you through. They'd have CCTV there to check you out. Probably cameras all over the bridge too. As soon as bridge security saw Rees on foot out here, they'd have to assume he was a jumper. They'd send the police out to stop him.

  He just needed to stay alive till then.

  Seconds later Rees spotted a security gate up ahead. He pushed his legs until they felt on the verge of cramping.

  He slid to a stop at the gate and slapped his hand on a button beside it. A small camera peered down at him from above the gate's frame.

  Rees waved his arms frantically at it. "Help! Help me! Help!" He had no idea if the camera was mic'd or not. It didn't matter. They'd get the message.

  He glanced back behind him again. He could see Faraj more clearly now. And then he realized he was trapped. Of course they weren't going to buzz him through this gate.

  He'd have to climb it.

  Rees threw the plastic bag over the gate then started climbing after it. He had barely gotten off the walkway when a loud clang rung out. Sparks flew just inches to the left of his head.

  The shot had barely missed him.

  In a panic he scrambled
to the top of the gate and fell down the other side, cracking his elbow hard on the walkway. An excruciating bolt of pain shot up his arm. Ignoring that, he scooped up the plastic bag lying there next to him. Nothing seemed to have spilled out.

  He leapt to his feet. As he began running again, Rees eyed the bridge's giant suspension cable. He could probably get to it, but he'd be an easy target up there. No cover at all.

  Upward wasn't the way out.

  Rees stopped running and brought the plastic bag up to his face, then clamped the top of it firmly in his teeth. He was going to need both hands for what he had in mind.

  He threw a leg over the bridge's railing and straddled it. Looking down, he couldn't see past the illuminated curtain of raindrops, lit up as they fell through the bridge's amber lights. For that, at least, he was grateful. He'd never been a fan of high places.

  He swung his other leg over the railing and lowered himself gently to a narrow steel perch about even with the bridge's deck. Four or five feet further below an enormous beam ran parallel to the roadway. Plenty wide enough to walk on. That's where he needed to get down to.

  He was facing the center of the bridge now. To his left, Faraj was already over the pedestrian gate and barreling up the walkway toward him through the rain. He would have seen Rees climb out over the railing for sure. Nothing could be done about that now.

  Rees began lowering himself down to that wider ledge. Without warning, his fingers slipped off the wet rail.

  He was falling.

  An instant later his feet struck the lower beam and shot out from under him to the rear. His chest thumped metal. The plastic bag with the artifacts in it went flying.

  Rees felt his legs swinging freely. Nothing beneath them, only his upper body lay on the ledge. And he was sliding backwards, sliding right off the bridge.

  He swept his palms back and forth wildly on the wet metal, trying to find some feature to grip. His fingers finally caught a groove, a seam of some kind. He dug in, and managed to halt the slide.